Monday, 31 August 2015

AB0501 Seminar 3: Global Responses and Accords

Global environmental management
4 Challenges:

- Environmental interdependencies
- Global consensus and collective actions
- Three institutional gaps
- Climategate
1. Environmental Interdependencies
a. Super externalities

- transboundary environmental problems

- ocean pollution, fisheries depletion, deforestation, slash and burn giving rise to
transboundary haze
b. Interconnectedness

- between ecological and economic systems

- address economic problems before ecological concerns (pragmatism)
- hard to address problem at national level due to need to:
- justify spending on ecology; public pressure to channel spending to more
pressing needs

2. Global Consensus and Collective Actions

a. Spatial and temporal impacts of externalities

- push costs of climate change to other countries and/or future generations

b. Unidirectional impact of externalities

- low incentive to cooperate when activities in one country cause damage only in the
other country (disparity in effects of consequences felt)
c. Short-term focus

- decisions made by government prioritise short-term goals over long-term

sustainability
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Monday, 31 August 2015

- political interest and public pressure (from the people with respect to jobs and
from corporations with respect to pro-business mindsets)

3. Institutional Gaps
Generally, weak and fragmented international environmental regime lacking in resources
and handicapped by a narrow mandate.
A. Jurisdiction gap

- national self-interest
- lack of dispute settlement procedures
B. Information gap

- lack of cross-country data comparability

- e.g. refusal by Indonesian government to disclose names of corporations
responsible for illegal slash and burn methods as well as location/number of
hotspots

- poor quality of self-reported data: incomplete, unreliable, inconsistent

C. Implementation gap

- overload due to treaty congestions

- need for standardisation and consolidation of treaties and regulations
- lack of integration
- lack of enforcement provisions and resources
Exercise
ClimateGate: falsifying of data by climatologists when global temperatures are in fact
declining so as to advocate the premise that man-made factors are driving climate
change. Presentation of consequences of anthropogenic climate change in a more
dramatic fashion than reality.
How did it happen:
-Revelation of emails
-Scientists from University of East Anglia, Climatic Research Unit
-uploaded onto a blog by an anti-global warming scientist
-picked up by the BBC, who subsequently verified the authenticity of the email
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- Solar activity is the main driver of climate change

- Correlation between frequency of hurricanes and CO2 level is weak
Impact on Policy Makers and the Public:

- Policy makers have treated global warming as fact and developed policies in line with
this assumption

- No impact:
- Copenhagen Summit (Dec 2009) which happened not long after Climategate (Nov
2009); no incident of countries boycotting event due to ClimateGate

- Public conviction about the threat of climate change has declined sharply after months
of questions over the science and growing disillusionment with government action

- Proportion of adults believing climate change is definitely a reality dropped by 30%

over the last year, from 44 - 31% in the latest survey by Ipsos Mori

2. Global consensus and collection actions

Ozone Depletion:

- Montreal Protocol (1985): Successful

- International treaty
- CFCs identified as threat to the ozone layer
- Regulated in the protocol
- Ozone on the road to recovery (within 60 years)
- Reduced greenhouse gas emissions by a quarter
- Achieved 5-6 times reduction as was set out in the Kyoto Protocol
- Created multilateral funds for 146 countries to adopt new cleaner technologies
and meet compliance commitments

- 90% of domestic fridge market in Germany has phased out usage of HCFC
- Partnerships with private sectors and businesses
- Coca Cola spent $140 million on alternative cooling technologies
- Catalysed energy efficient improvements
- Create jobs in innovation industry
Sustainable Development and Climate Change
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- Kyoto Protocol (1997): (Deemed) Failure

- Ozone depletion: few sources and few types of CFCs. Readily substituted.
- not applicable to carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases
- multiplicity of natural and anthropogenic sources
- no substitution without disruption and cost
- Sulfur Trading Program
- successfully reduced sulfur emissions from coal fired plants in the US
- trade sulfur emissions in the market: market forces incentive
- only one gas
- small number of traders
- single legal regimes
- does not apply to climate change
- Strategic arms reduction treaty
- mutually verifiable reductions
- monitoring is more difficult
- Research development demonstration & deployment (RDD&D)
- $8 billion/year in energy R&D on coal and nuclear
- military R&D $80 billion/year
- Split problem into bite-sized pieces
- 1.6 bn dont have access to reliable energy
- decentralised energy solutions are more suitable
- energy modernisation
- adaptation: to climate variability
- better city planning and development
- All countries not treated equally by Kyoto
- Canada, Australia dropped out of the Kyoto protocol